jamesbunagna
what does the community think of it?
It’s important to note how the Linux community interacts with change. In the past, whenever a change has been significant enough to influence individual workflows, it often provoked strong reactions. This was evident when systemd was introduced and adopted by distros like Arch and Debian. Even though systemd was arguably superior in essential aspects for most users, it failed to meet the needs of at least a vocal minority. Consequently, community endeavors were set up to enable the use of Debian or Arch without systemd.
Similarly, the introduction of immutable distributions seems to upset some people, though (at least to me) it’s unjustified. Immutable distributions don’t necessarily alter the traditional model. For instance, the existence of Fedora Silverblue doesn’t impose changes on traditional Fedora; let alone Arch or Debian.
But, overall, most Linux users aren’t bothered by it. Though, they often don’t see a use for themselves. Personally, I attribute this at least in part to existing misconceptions and misinformation on the subject matter. Though, still, a minority[1] (at best ~10%) actually prefers and uses ‘immutable’ distros.
Do the downsides outweigh the benefits or vice versa?
Depends entirely on what you want out of your system. For me, they absolutely do. But it’s important to note that the most important thing they impose on the user is the paradigm shift that comes with going ‘immutable’. And this is actually what traditional Linux users are most bothered by. But if you’re unfamiliar with Linux conventions, then you probably won’t even notice.
As a side note, it’s perhaps important to note that the similarities between traditional distros are greater than the similarities between immutable distros. Also, Fedora Atomic is much more like traditional Fedora than it is similar to, say, openSUSE Aeon or Vanilla OS. Grouping them together as if they are a cohesive group with very similar attributes is misleading. Of course, they share a few traits, but overall, the differences are far more pronounced.
Therefore, it is a false dichotomy to simply label them as traditional distros versus immutable distros. Beyond these names, which we have assigned to them, these labels don’t actually adequately explain how these systems work, how they interact, how their immutability is achieved (if at all), what underlying technologies they use, or how they manage user interactions. The implications of the above. Etc.
Could this help Linux reach more mainstream audiences?
The success of the Steam Deck and its SteamOS are the most striking and clear proof of this. So, yes. Absolutely.
- Not accounting SteamOS users.
Nixos tends to lean on the term reproducible instead of immutable, because you can have settings (e.g files in /etc & ~/.config) changed outside of nix’s purview, it just won’t be reproducible and may be overwritten by nix.
Interesting. If possible, could you more explicitly draw comparisons on how this isn’t quite the same over on say Fedora Atomic? Like, sure changes of /etc are (at least by default) being kept track of. But you indeed can change it. libostree doesn’t even care what you do in your home folder. Thus, changes to e.g. ~/.config (and everything else in /var[1]) are kept nowhere else by default.
- Which happens to be more crowded than on other distros as folders like
/are actually found here as well.
Thank you for chiming in and providing your thoughts!
While we’re at it, I absolutely appreciate your work. Wonderful stuff! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
UKI is something we very much want to do in the future, but it’s a long-term goal
That’s lovely to hear!
As far as replacing the init system, I think even in traditional Fedora that would be extremely challenging, but it could probably be done as a custom image.
Aight. I’ll change the list then. Thank you for enlightening me on this. The feasibility as a custom image is really encouraging; perhaps I’ll give it a go 😜.
Bazzite seemed much closer to being truely immutable
If you meant that it’s even harder to tinker/change/configure etc compared to SteamOS, then I’d like to inform you that this is false. Fedora Atomic, and thus Bazzite, facilitates quite a lot actually. Of course, it’s not as moldable as say Arch or Gentoo. To illustrate this, I won’t bother you with all the things it can do. Because that would take a while. Instead, I’ll only focus on the things it actually can not do. On the top of my head, the following comes to mind:
Rip systemd out and replace it with another init, but I’m unaware if traditional Fedora even facilitates this to begin with.Bazzite’s founder came by and corrected me on this. Even this is probably possible as a custom image.- UKI
- Setup systemd-boot (or any other bootloader) instead of GRUB
- Kmods can be hit or miss; what’s found here is accessible. What remains can be very finicky.
- 3rd party repositories can be hit or miss; for example, both Terra and Tailscale work, but e.g. ProtonVPN may not.
Ah, I get what you mean now by inflammatory statements
Actually, it wasn’t me that said that 😅. I do find it in jrgd’s reply, though.
Though interestingly, I didn’t feel my comment was very inflammatory and it got downvoted too. 😅
For the record, I also didn’t downvote your comment 😜. Though, looking at how well-received my previous reply has been, I can’t ignore the possibility that peeps that agreed with what I said also chose to downvote your comment.
I was looking at it more from just a standpoint of systemd itself
Sorry, I don’t think I completely understood you here.
just looking at it from the standpoint that fedora and rhel can tend to be industry leaders for change.
I absolutely agree with you that Fedora and Red Hat are very effective agents of change. So yes, if they would get behind an alternative for systemd, then that would definitely get traction.
if RHEL and Ubuntu together made
Has something like this ever happened in the past? I can’t recollect a collaboration of sorts between these two entities. If anything, they seem to be at odds with eachother: Mir vs Wayland, Snap vs Flatpak and even Upstart vs systemd. Though, at least so far, Red Hat holds an impressive winning track record.
I think we would see that move downstream.
Absolutely. But, and this is my inner-systemd-skeptic talking, systemd is ridiculously intertwined with the current Linux landscape and often times new updates even show a glimpse of how much more intermingling we’ll get in the future. I hope we’ll eventually get something to systemd like what PipeWire has been to PulseAudio. That’s why development into alternatives like dinit and s6 is of utmost importance.
As far as my use of the term bloated, I’m looking at it strictly from a standpoint for the amount of code that goes into the system.
Suckless it is 😜. It’s a fine definition. Thank you for that. But, I got to ask, where is the line drawn? Like, the Linux kernel, by virtue of being monolithic, has to be bloated as well. Right? So, if that’s the case, is somehow the kernel’s bloat okay while bloat is unaccepted for the system and service manager? If so, why? I’m genuinely curious.
The more code you have, the more entries for security risks.
Sure~ish. Deep discussion. I’m fine with giving this to ya.
I’m not saying that there’s anything that’s particularly better out there right now
I suppose some peeps will enjoy themselves with what’s out there. Do you happen to use an alternative on a daily-basis?
but I think we should always be looking for alternatives regardless of what your views are for the people that created the code. KISS philosophy, basically. That and being open to change to avoid stagnation.
Wholeheartedly agree 😊.
Aight, got it.
For now, I’m exclusively on Wayland. Though, hopefully Openbox (or something inspired by it) will make the jump so that I can see for myself what all this goodness is about.
Anyhow, it was a lovely conversation. I enjoyed it to bits. I wish ya tha best. Cya, out there. Bye!
